Flashback – Nibelheim Mansion
-Cloud enters the mansion to talk to Sephiroth.
-You’ve got to be kidding me. I get the chance to play piano, and it involves super complex controls which I am not familiar with, but I’ll try playing the piece from Tifa’s anyway…. “Re” key doesn’t work though. Moving on.
-This place is kind of great. Like, straight out of “The 7th Guest” for any of you early 90s gamers.
Full of safes and paintings and cobwebs and even a piano, but can’t interact with them. This tells me that I’ll be back here eventually in the present time.
-No sign of Sephiroth, but we find a secret passage below the Mansion. Sephiroth is in a lab at the end of this passage.
-He’s reading about Professor Gast, who discovered a 2,000 year old organism, an Ancient, and named it Jenova. Created the Jenova Project, and shortly after opened the first Mako reactor. More pieces, but still not sure exactly how these fit together, what with Jenova being apparently Sephiroth’s mom.
-At least Sephiroth is as confused as I am. He wasn’t being cagey or hiding stuff – he legitimately seems confused about the connection between his mother, Jenova, and Gast’s Jenova Project.
-Sephiroth stayed in that basement for a while. Reading. Alone.
I want that library.
-Time passes. Cloud wakes up inside the mansion, and the music is super fucking ominous. Random soldier: “Sephiroth seems different.” Uh oh.
-Cloud heads back to the Gast’s Basement Laboratory of Fun and Games. First thing we hear upon entering? Sephiroth literally saying “Ha, ha, ha…” And he calls Cloud a traitor?
-Sephiroth learned that this planet was settled by the Cetra, an itinerant race. Their mythology was that at the end of their traveling, they’d find the Promised Land and settle. But some of the Cetra stopped the journey early, and stayed on the planet rather than continuing towards the Promised Land. Huh. Is that what the current civilization is? Descendants of rogue Cetra? Can’t be – so much has been made of the last Ancients.
-He goes on to say that disaster struck the planet a while back. Cloud’s ancestors (regular humans I think) hid and sacrificed the Cetra to survive. So I think this means the Cetra settled alongside normal humans. Most moved on, but some elected to continue living alongside them, and this group was sacrificed when some disaster hit the planet. Sephiroth would then see Cloud (AND ALL HUMANS MWAHAHA!) as betrayers of his kind.
-And here’s the connection! Jenova was indeed his mother, in that Sephiroth was the product of the Jenova Project, which intended to bestow Cetra-like powers on people. This is very similar to the FFVI Gestahlian Empire – Espers – Magitek plotline.
-Before explaining further, Sephiroth stomps away to “go see [his] mother.” One thing I’m still not sure about – did he only hear about his mother Jenova from Professor Gast, or did the 2,000 year old Cetra take the form of a normal human mother as part of the Project?
-Side note: I get that this is a lot being heaped on Sephiroth, but it amuses me a bit how melodramatic he is. Locking himself in an old basement library/laboratory, his gestures, his looks, his dramatic walk-aways. lol
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Flashback – Nibelheim
-AND HOLY SHIT I IMMEDIATELY REGRET LAUGHING AT THAT. THE TOWN IS IN FLAMES
-The town’s on fire, Cloud can’t save anyone in the burning buildings, and he sees Sephiroth hacking down citizens before walking away through the flames.
A changed man.
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Flashback – Mt. Nibel Mako Reactor
-Cloud pursues Sephiroth here and enters.
-And we see the origins of another flashback from earlier in the game. Tifa next to her dead father, Sephiroth’s sword lying next to them.
TIFA: “Sephiroth… Shinra… Mako reactors… SOLDIER… I hate them all!” Can’t blame you.
-Up ahead, Sephiroth’s knocking on the door to the main Jenova storage unit. He wants his mom. Tifa runs up to him with his own sword in anger. Sephiroth wrestles the sword away, THEN SLICES HER IN SLOW MOTION WTF HOW IS SHE ALIVE
-Well… she’s okay. I mean, of course she is. This is a flashback. But still.
-IS THAT JENOVA
-Now the plan is clearer. Sephiroth wants to join up with mother dearest, take the Planet back for the Cetra, and somehow get to the Promised Land.
Family reunion.
-The metallic angel statue we saw on Jenova was just an outer cover. The real thing is beneath it, and just as eerie to see.
GIVE MOMMY A KISS.
-And yet… this whole thing makes me sympathize so much more with Sephiroth already than any prior villain. Sure, he’s still a villain – all the anger in the world doesn’t justify what you did to the people of Nibelheim. But unlike Chaos, the Emperor, the Dark Cloud, Zeromus, Exdeath, and Kefka, we see Sephiroth’s perspective here.
And that’s nothing compared to Jenova. Enslaved for years, and drained? Hating her (right now at least) would be like hating one of the espers locked in the Magitek Research Facility.
-Cloud quite rightfully makes my point for me – “what about my friends, my family, my hometown?” Sephiroth’s anger doesn’t come close to justifying that.
SEPHIROTH: “Ha, ha, ha… my sadness? What am I sad about? I am the chosen one. I have been chosen to be the leader of this planet.” Destroying Nibelheim is your idea of leadership? Bad start, dude.
-Some super dramatic flashes between Cloud and Sephiroth, as if gearing up for a fight.
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Next time: Back to the future. Erm. The present.
